Can filesharers be triggered by economic incentives? Results of an experiment

Illegal filesharing on the internet leads to considerable financial losses for artists and copyright owners as well as producers and sellers of music. Thus far, measures to contain this phenomenon have been rather restrictive. However, there are still a considerable number of illegal systems, and users are able to decide quite freely between legal and illegal downloads because the latter are still difficult to sanction. Recent economic approaches account for the improved bargaining position of users. They are based on the idea of revenue-splitting between professional sellers and peers. In order to test such an innovative business model, the study reported in this article carried out an experiment with 100 undergraduate students, forming five small peer-to-peer networks.The networks were confronted with different economic conditions.The results indicate that even experienced filesharers hold favourable attitudes towards revenue-splitting.They seem to be willing to adjust their behaviour to different economic conditions

Von Tilzer Tunes Sell 10 Mil in Yr.

The article lists popular songs written by Harry Von Tilzer. In one year 6,000,000 copies of his songs were sold in the United States. When foreign sales are added the sales figure raises to 10,000,000.Destination Indiana - The Von Tilzer Brother

BLACK UNEMPLOYMENT AND INFOTAINMENT

"Why has the black unemployment rate in the United States been more than twice that of whites over the past three decades? This article builds on earlier efforts to explain this conundrum using a discrimination framework, but it refocuses the explanation onto indirect cultural factors that motivate discriminatory behavior. Consistent with a call for using social phenomena to explain economic outcomes, the article reveals that "infotainment" (information and entertainment) contributes to increases in the black-white unemployment rate gap and to higher black unemployment". ("JEL "J164, J71, Z10) Copyright (c) 2008 Western Economic Association International.